On June 10, 2025, in Donetsk, a Ukrainian military body recovery team conducted an autopsy on the remains of Russian soldiers. This is part of a challenging mission to repatriate the bodies of soldiers killed in action from both sides, marking the largest-scale exchange of remains to date. Ukrainian military units are relying on ground drones for approximately 20% of the task of evacuating the bodies.The drones are remotely operated, transporting the bodies of deceased and wounded soldiers to the front lines and returning them to the rear.
Seven Russian soldiers lay on a hill in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. Three were charred black, and four were decomposing. Maggots crawled out of the hollow skulls, and flies completely covered the bodies. The stench of decomposition was overwhelming.The smell of death is the odor of decomposing bodies. The worst part is living in a state where you cannot evacuate for days, with the stench of death wafting from the bodies of fallen comrades in the defensive positions. As dusk falls and drone flight conditions deteriorate, the bodies of fallen comrades are recovered. Russian forces advancing on the front lines can easily obtain the bodies of Ukrainian soldiers killed in action.
On June 17, 2025, Ukraine and Russia exchanged 6,000 bodies at their latest bilateral meeting in Istanbul. Over the past two years, body exchanges between the two armies have been conducted approximately twice a month.According to Defense Ministry data, as of May 2024, while Russia has not disclosed any figures, Ukraine has recovered the remains of over 8,000 Ukrainian soldiers. Body recovery teams extracted DNA from spinal fragments in the ashes of the bodies. Some remains were identified by necklaces carried by family members. Tens of thousands of families on both sides remain unaware of the fate of their loved ones lost in combat.
Warning: Experts from the Ukrainian body exhumation group Platsdarm analyze dead Russian soldiers, June 10 in Donetsk.
Cristian Segura
No comments:
Post a Comment